


Acta Deos Numquam Mortalia Fallunt

by EthelPhantom



Category: Code Geass
Genre: Actually there's a few of them, Angst with a Happy Ending, But it's like really implied, Gen, I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, It's just one offhand comment, M/M, i had to get this out of my head, oops my hand slipped
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 07:16:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19763230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EthelPhantom/pseuds/EthelPhantom
Summary: Mortal actions never deceive the Gods, but maybe the same mortal actions could sometimes make the Gods pity the ones that gave up their everything for the benefit of the world long before their supposed death, long before they should have died. At least a little bit.Maybe they would pity the one that suffered so much on his birthdays just enough to let him see a kinder day once more.





	Acta Deos Numquam Mortalia Fallunt

**Author's Note:**

> The title means "Mortal actions never deceive the Gods" if I'm correct. It's Latin. 
> 
> Also, have fun, I needed to get this out of my head at like 11pm. I'll get back to correcting it at some point when I'm less tired.
> 
> Also, this is kind of a birthday gift to Suzaku. I love him.

Gods had abandoned Suzaku and his life ages ago.

A cruel joke — that was how most of Suzaku's life went. First it was killing his father, then it was letting go of Nunnally and Lelouch, then he went and joined the Britannian army despite the fact it was, as an Eleven, probably the worst idea ever, and then he decided to drag Lelouch to his father. None of them good, none of them right, none of them probably even necessary, but all of them done all the same, never to be undone. No deed could be undone, everyone knew that. 

Yeah, his life was full of mistakes. 

His birthdays didn't go much better. Suzaku couldn’t remember his first five at all. Sixth, seventh and eighth were spent alone, or with his family. Never anything great, honestly. He did not remember the times with anything but bitterness.

Then, he spent a birthday or two with Lelouch and Nunnally. Probably two. They were, frankly speaking, the happiest and most joyful birthdays in his life, which was also kind of sad since those times were gone. He wouldn't and never even could return to those ever again, not even by using refrain — and he had tried, oh, he really had. 

Rest of his birthdays up until his seventeenth were spent all alone, often nursing wounds and bruises he had gotten as some Britannians beat him up. It seemed to be a tradition by now, a mere habit. It was like beating the Eleven kid on his birthday was the Britannians favourite past time. 

His seventeenth birthday was happier, spent with Lelouch and Nunnally again. The rest of the student council had congratulated him and given him presents, but somehow Nunnally had convinced Milly to let Suzaku spend his birthday with whom he wanted to so there was nothing big on that day. Suzaku couldn’t have been more grateful. He knew Milly's tendency to go overboard with anything and everything, so it was enough to get gifts from them — although Nina simply avoided him and the student council meeting room for the entirety of that day. That was fine. 

Lelouch baked him a cake, Nunnally folded him three paper cranes, saying that even though she knew a thousand paper cranes needed to be folded before they brought fortune, maybe these three would bring him at least a little bit of it since they were made with so much love. Maybe the Gods would pity the blind little girl and let the cranes she folded be enough for whom she was making them for. She also promised to make him one for his every birthday until she no longer could for any reason, such as death or paralysing of her hands. 

Suzaku's eighteenth birthday went worse than any other. It was better than most of them, but knowing what was going to happen in only a few months from then. It would have been better than any of the others, but now, watching the man whom he had dragged to the previous emperor, the man who had betrayed him, the one he had once let go of, thinking everything would get better for the then little child, watching him say that he _loved_ Suzaku, despite knowing they'd be eternally separated in the next few months to come — no, it became too much for him to bear. 

Lelouch couldn’t love him, not after what Suzaku had done to him, not after what _he_ had done to Suzaku. 

Nunnally had, surprisingly, folded him another paper crane. She had left it outside the prison bars that held her in, even though she was told he was dead and she hated both him and Lelouch. It didn't make any sense, but then again, Nunnally was never one to break her promises no matter what happened, just like her brother. They would both fulfill their promises in some way until the day they died. 

Lelouch kissed Suzaku that night. Sweet, but full of sorrow as they held onto each other so tight one would think they were one another's lifeline. Maybe they were. 

On Zero's nineteenth birthday, he found a paper crane from his bedside. Nunnally had probably done it and had it sent to his room, thinking it was Suzaku, although Kururugi Suzaku had died almost a year ago. He had truly died the second Nunnally started screaming as her brother was embraced by the coldness of death itself. Only Zero was left behind. 

Then he realised there were two, instead of only one, the other being bright purple. It was made differently than the ones Nunnally made. 

Suzaku looked at it once, then twice, and then again before he realised someone had written something in it. Suzaku carefully unfolded the crane, finding a letter addressed to him. It was dated a year old. 

_"Happy nineteenth birthday. I hope you're well enough on this fine day that I can unfortunately not spend with you. One day, if we meet again, I won't let everything fall apart. As they say, mortal actions never deceive Gods, but I'm really wishing I could pull off one more miracle and be reborn, with you. And then, on the day we reunite, on that day I will accept your love, and maybe you'll forgive me as well._

_Love,_

_Lelouch"_

If it was Suzaku, he would have cried, but Zero didn't feel, didn't have emotions, so instead, his face betrayed nothing. Just coldness was left behind in the chest of Zero. Maybe he felt like choking inside, like someone was suffocating him, but none of the feelings of Zero mattered. Instead, he stayed silent. Kururugi Suzaku was dead, there was no reason to let his feelings get the better of him.

That day, Zero visited the graves of Kururugi Suzaku, the Knight of Betrayal, and his emperor's, the Demon Emperor Lelouch vi Britannia's graves with Empress Nunnally. 

Her eyes were dull, yet glistening with tears that were not and never would be shed as she placed a paper crane on the dead Knight's grave. She said nothing. 

This became a tradition, on both every tenth of July and every fifth of December. 

Seventy-one years later the Empress passed away, but Zero was still alive, merely a shell of what he had once been. Some people said Zero had killed the Empress. Zero kept on bringing a paper crane to her grave every year on the twenty-fifth of October, even though there was no reason for an empty shell to do something like that. The graves she always visited were left to rot as no one cared about them. Kururugi Suzaku might have visited them, but not Zero. After all, Zero was the reason the two of them were dead.

Nine years later Zero died, on his birthday, alone. He had been many things in his life, but never had his actions deceive any of the Gods. He still died on the day he had been born, as though the Gods never forgot already dead Kururugi Suzaku who betrayed everything for himself, for his ideals, and then for the world. He was buried in his mask so to protect the face of a murderer, a betrayer, the friend of a tyrant from the world. So to protect the peace he had restored and the late Empress had kept alive for so long from the Knight of Betrayal.

Two hundred, twenty-three and six years later a smiling, enthusiastic brown-haired boy met another smiling, but calm and collected raven-haired boy under a cherry tree on the tenth of July. They pressed their foreheads together and thanked the Gods as they shared a kiss. A young girl with sand-brown hair cheered as she held a crane on which the number "1000" was written, although she didn't know why it was the 1000th instead of something, _anything_ else. 

Yeah, the Gods couldn’t be deceived by mortal actions, but they did see what the mortal actions were based on, saw the despair behind each one of the three children's actions and had mercy on them. 

Yes, maybe that was after all the best gift the once dead Kururugi Suzaku could have ever asked for. 

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked?
> 
> Do tell me what you thought of this!


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